


The Heart of the Matter

by ShitpostingfromtheBarricade



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Don't copy to another site, Fairy Tale Curses, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Get-Together Fic, Grantaire pov, M/M, True Love's Kiss, Truth Spells, lies and deception despite a truth curse, only the tail-end though so sorry I guess?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-13
Updated: 2019-07-13
Packaged: 2020-06-27 13:17:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19791664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShitpostingfromtheBarricade/pseuds/ShitpostingfromtheBarricade
Summary: Grantaire has been cursed (because of course he has), and Éponine convinced Enjolras that he can help--which yeah, he might be physically capable,maybe,but that doesn't mean he will.  Or should.Warnings:none





	The Heart of the Matter

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bleulily (wollstoncrafts)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wollstoncrafts/gifts).



> BleuLily correctly guessed Grantaire's birthday in my [10 Things AU](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18985768/chapters/45081952) and requested true love's kiss in an urban fantasy environment with some fake dating mixed in and Éposette on the side. Unfortunately, a lot of the backstory that dug into these elements got cut, but I promise that the details have survived in the end notes.
> 
> My deepest, widest, fullest love to [PieceOfCait](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PieceOfCait/pseuds/PieceOfCait) for beta-reading this for me and suffering through my agonizing over the planning process. (Seriously, exchanging WhatsApp details with me is a dangerous gamble, and I came out on the winning end of it.)

It's only once the sun has finally set, vivid hues fading into uniform darkness punctuated by pinpricks of stars, that the uncharacteristic silence of the night finally occurs to Grantaire.

Silence hasn’t been altogether uncommon with them, what with Grantaire sidestepping a truth-charm that Enjolras has mistaken for something pertaining to a verbal word count, but in the week since they began their temporary relationship, being with the blond has never _felt_ particularly quiet. They’ve always been doing things, or going places, or Enjolras has been running an ongoing stream of commentary that Grantaire hasn’t felt especially inclined to interrupt.

(Most of it hasn’t been outstandingly political, which probably helps—Grantaire doesn’t feel compelled to drown out his anxiety over the man’s efforts with a steady current of utter and inane bullshit.)

He hasn’t been able to trust his words of late—Grantaire still doesn’t know himself well enough to know what of his thoughts and feelings is true and what isn’t—so he’s pleasantly surprised when exactly the words he plans to say leave his lips.

“You seem far away. What’s up?”

A breeze from the harbor pulls its fingers through Enjolras’s hair, and Grantaire grips his forearms a little harder to keep himself from reaching out.

“It’s Sunday.”

Grantaire hums. “So it is.”

“We’ve been dating for a week.”

And that’s not true, because dating means that they’re in a real relationship, one without a fixed deadline.

“Your curse will be broken tomorrow, then.”

Grantaire’s mouth sets as he parses through the correct sidestepping to respond. “That’s what Éponine said.” 

“Or maybe tonight, I guess it depends on the technicalities of the curse and whether it begins from when we agreed to date or the first date.” In private, especially when he’s nervous or has something on his mind, Enjolras is apparently prone to rambling, and it might be the most endearing thing Grantaire has discovered in this entire charade. He’s going to miss it. “With that in mind, I suppose we should hold off on the break-up until we’ve confirmed that the curse is broken.”

Grantaire tries not to grimace; his curse won’t be broken today, not tomorrow, nor a week nor a month nor a year from now. Tomorrow Enjolras will discover the deception—Éponine’s deception, more accurately, but a deception that Grantaire and Cosette had done nothing to disprove—and he’ll go back to hating Grantaire the way he always has, and Grantaire will never get his true love’s kiss.

Shaking his head, he tamps down bitter laughter. _True love’s kiss._ He’d been doomed from the start anyway: true love is nothing more than a label on a bottle in crooked potion shop windows. True love from Enjolras? Grantaire can’t even be sure that his own feelings for the man are more than adoration, veneration, and a pinch of infatuation. Enjolras’s feelings until the week prior had been nothing short of indifference, a hearty splash of impatience and irritation thrown in when Grantaire did something particularly stupid.

This past week...they could have been friends. Could have, except that it’s all been under false pretenses, and when Enjolras finds out he’ll dump Grantaire, not just as a fake-boyfriend but from his life entirely. He can’t ban Grantaire from meetings—Cosette hosts them out of her shop, and she would never let Enjolras uproot him from his own place of employment and an entire room of the building in which he lives—but maybe Enjolras will change locations. It’d be a major slight to Cosette and Éponine as well, but they’d also played their part in this, so Enjolras might not care.

The man in question stands still beside him as the salty breeze continues its gentle course. A chill runs through him, and Grantaire is grateful for the sweater that had stifled him with heat through his and Enjolras’s afternoon out. Under other circumstances, the quiet might make Grantaire antsy and anxious for something to say to fill it, but after a week of comfortable silences he feels no such obligation.

“I’ve been thinking,” Enjolras starts, “and you can say ‘no,’ but I’m...proposing it. If you’re interested.”

Grantaire draws wary and reluctant eyes back from the moon’s reflection on the water to the embodiment of the sun an arm’s length from him. Even washed out in the pale gleam of moonlight, Enjolras still looks radiant, wisps of blond glowing in the darkness. The streetlamps haven’t come on yet, and Grantaire almost wishes they won’t.

“I’ve enjoyed myself this week, and I was thinking—that is, I am interested in. Hoping that.” 

Enjolras doesn’t lose his words, he just doesn’t. Even in his stream-of-consciousness rambles, half-asleep or keyed up on adrenaline or furiously escaping the temptation of a street fight, Enjolras always knows what to say and how to say it. Grantaire feels his eyebrows bunching as he straightens, a questioning hand reaching out halfway between them. “Enj…?”

“We don’t have to break up,” the blond says at last, “if you don’t want to. I wouldn’t...mind.” 

His head is ducked down, and Grantaire can see the blond worrying his lip in a way that might make Grantaire melt under different circumstances.

For his part, Grantaire is elation. He’s elation, and he is defeat. This is all he’s ever wanted to hear from Enjolras, and it’s a lie. 

(And what is it about veracity spells that always seem to entrap those involved in more falsehoods than truth?)

He sighs. “I have something to tell you.”

Enjolras’s eyebrows raise as his head swings around to Grantaire. It’s the first time he’s volunteered anything since getting his dumb ass cursed, and of _course_ it has to be this.

“If it’s about what I just said, we can wait so you don’t use up your—”

“I can talk as much as I want.” More than anything, Grantaire would like to avert eye-contact, hide and drown in his shame, but he owes Enjolras at least this much.

Confusion clouds the man’s face. “Then why…?”

This time he does let himself look away, turning his attention out to the harbor. “It was a truth curse. It _is_ a truth curse.” 

Silence stretches between them. “I don’t understand.”

And of course he doesn’t, he’s not a mindreader. “‘Until someone learns to love your true self,’” he quotes derisively. “That’s what the sorceror said. Overliteral bastard.”

“But...Éponine—”

He shrugs. “Éponine lied. She, uh. Wanted me to have a chance in hell, I guess.”

Grantaire risks a glance over at Enjolras. The man’s body is still turned toward Grantaire, but his eyes are cast down in thought. 

“So.” The tone is pensieve, as though still mulling through the information. “No one has to ‘tolerate your sharp tongue for a week’?”

Against the better judgment of the stars, the gods, and the universe itself, he snorts. “Technically, everyone who knows me does.” Shaking his head, he continues. “But no, the fake-dating was a ruse.”

“To what end?” 

Shrugging again, Grantaire turns to look at Enjolras and is surprised to see the man’s confusion beginning to morph into something like anger. “Um. She thought it might help. With the curse.”

“And how _exactly,_ then,” Enjolras starts, his tone dangerously even as his nostrils flare, “is your curse broken?”

Oh no. 

Oh no, oh no, 

_oh no._

He’s furious. This is exactly as bad as Grantaire had feared, maybe worse. They’d _used_ Enjolras, used him without his proper and informed consent, and he must _hate_ Grantaire now. And this after asking Grantaire out, after they’d nearly kissed Saturday night—

“I’m sorry,” Grantaire tells him, eyes turning down. He feels his face burning, and his jaw hurts under the strain of the humiliation. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, _shit,_ I’m sorry. I should have told you—I was going to tell you Friday, and then Saturday, and then today, and it just never seemed right, and I should have just told you last Sunday when you first asked what was wrong instead of being a moody bitch and letting Éponine answer for me, and I just.” Tears are threatening to run down his cheeks, and he can’t bring himself to look at Enjolras’s surely-fuming face.

“And so, what, you decided to play with my emotions, just like that?” The voice is crisp and sharp, and the sneer clear in Grantaire’s mind’s eye. “Was there a headcount involved, or did you just need to toy with one person’s feelings?

“Did you and Éponine laugh, I wonder,” he continues, scoffing, “when she’d come home from work before our dates, and you after, talking about what an _idiot_ I was for actually believing the lies you fed me?”

_After work? What happened while Éponine was at work?_

“Was anything she told me about you even true? Or did she just invent whatever she thought best fit the bill for your needs?”

He finally finds his voice, looking up despite feeling fresh tear tracks on his cheeks. “What are you— _my needs?”_

“Whatever you needed for— _for capturing my heart,_ you ass!” 

“For captu—” It all clicks. “You thought I needed to _capture hearts?”_

_I captured your heart?_

“That’s what this has all been about, hasn’t it? You two noticed my stupid infatuation and decided to play with me?” His arms cross defensively over his chest, and the streetlamps finally decide to kick in, cloaking the blond in rosy golden light. His face is red, eyebrows still set as he pointedly stares toward the bustling streets opposite the harbor.

Grantaire sputters. “I—we—” Taking a deep breath, he recollects his thoughts and tries again. “My curse is broken by true love’s kiss. I’d more or less given it up as a lost cause, but Éponine thought I should give it a try.”

The cogs are visibly turning in Enjolras’s head, a litany of expressions crossing his face before he slowly turns back to Grantaire, cautious suspicion writ across his features. “And fake-dating. That was the try.”

He swallows his pride. “Fake-dating you, specifically.”

“Me specifically,” Enjolras repeats deliberately. At Grantaire’s nod, he continues. “You didn’t know, then. You didn’t know I already liked you.”

He ignores the combustion that occurs in his brain at the words, opting instead to feign functionability. “No one in our household knew, which I’m pretty sure means _no one_ knows.”

Enjolras’s eyebrows raise. “Your curse only works for what you believe.”

“I haven’t said much lately, have I?” he quips.

The joke nearly cracks Enjolras’s veneer, the corner of his mouth quirking up. They regard each other for a quiet moment, caught at last in the eye of the storm, before Enjolras begins again, softly. “Everyone knows, Grantaire.”

This should be clicking all sorts of buttons, the missing piece to every incomplete fantasy obtained, but Grantaire finds himself coming up blank on any and all thought. “You...actually want to date me?”

“As long as you’ll allow,” Enjolras confirms.

“That’s a long time.” Grantaire’s eyes widen at the admission. “That—I didn’t—”

“Truth spell?” a laughing Enjolras guesses.

“Silence really was the only viable solution.”

Nodding, Enjolras makes a poor show of arranging his features into a more serious expression. “I see. _Well,”_ he says, stepping forward and leaning in toward Grantaire conspiratorially, “I don’t think I’d mind hearing the unmitigated truth from you more often.”

Grantaire swallows, doing his best to raise a critical eyebrow. “Even if I just shit on all of your values?”

Enjolras’s nose scrunches, and Grantaire bites the inside of his mouth to keep from doing something terrible like commenting on it. “Assuming that it’s your true and actual opinion and not just you taking the piss, then yes, even then.”

The gap between them has already been partially bridged by the blond’s step forward, and Grantaire meets him halfway with his own step. 

“You know,” Grantaire tells him, their elbows nearly bumping where they both stand with their arms yet crossed, “if this kiss business works, I’ll be right back on my dishonesty bullshit.”

Enjolras’s forehead bumps against his, curls cushioning the space between them.

“I think I can manage.”

—-

“Grantaire!” Éponine yells from the kitchen.

Enjolras bleerily peers over at the clock on the bedside table. 7:00. Five days a week Éponine doesn’t need to be at the bank until 8; he’s not sure why this torture is being inflicted on them, on a _weekend_ no less. Three months of dating should make Éponine’s early morning wake-up calls more endearing to him, he thinks, but as much as his understanding of and appreciation for Éponine has improved these past months, he’s not sure there is anything he hates more about dating Grantaire.

“Mrrrrmmm,” his boyfriend says, rolling over and hugging Enjolras’s back against his chest before responding much more loudly and eloquently. “What?”

“Get your shit out of the living room! I swear to God, if I have to stare at your giant-ass stack of client questionnaire forms one more day they’re going into the Goddamned fire.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he sleepily responds, “I’m getting out of bed now.”

Grantaire makes no such motion, and for a moment Enjolras is able to appreciate the morning’s ephemeral tranquility until the realization hits him.

Turning slowly to look over his shoulder, Enjolras verifies that it is indeed still his boyfriend, _his Grantaire,_ pressed up against him in bed.

“Grantaire,” he murmurs slowly, “what are your thoughts on Rousseau?”

The correct answer is that Grantaire honestly couldn’t care less about the man or his philosophy because he was ‘a shit human being,’ that Grantaire’d mostly brushed up on his knowledge of the man’s work to terrorize meetings. 

Their kiss three months ago had been just that—no more, no less. Neither had been particularly concerned or even surprised at the development: for all of their distant pining and admiration, they certainly didn’t know one another well enough to be any further in love than that. The months since haven’t always been easy, but they’ve certainly been worthwhile, and the question of breaking the curse hadn’t even crossed Enjolras’s mind until— 

“Ideal and practical father-figure and lover—not a hypocritical bone in the man’s body.”

They’re both startled by the door flinging open, a suspicious Éponine regarding them from the doorway.

“Thought not,” she says matter-of-factly, crossing her arms. “Congratulations, you two are disgusting, and Grantaire has until this pot of coffee is done brewing to get his shit before you both lose caffeine-privileges.”

“You suck,” Grantaire informs her before bolting up. “No you don’t?”

“Glad to see something stuck with you,” she nods in response to the realization. “I’ll leave you two be, then.”

The door closes behind her as Grantaire’s eyes find Enjolras.

“Enj, I—” His eyes narrow suddenly. “Did you try to use Rousseau to verify that I could lie?”

Tamping down a grin, Enjolras shrugs. “It worked.”

The glare continues another beat before breaking out into a smile. “You love me.” His voice is filled with awe, and Enjolras feels his stomach flutter.

“You love me too.” Their legs intertwine as joy courses through Enjolras’s whole body.

“When did it happen? Do you know? Which one…?”

He pulls his boyfriend closer. “I think I’ve been in love with you for a long time, but...could have been you, could have been me, could have been any number of big or small things.”

“Hmm,” the man hums, clearly still mulling it over. 

“I suspect I’m going to start loving you significantly less if don’t move your cursebreaking paperwork, though.”

Grantaire huffs. A kiss is pressed to Enjolras’s cheek before the man begins extracting himself from the bed (and Enjolras’s limbs), and the loss is immediately mourned with a plaintive whine.

“I’ll be right back.” A light peck is deposited to his mouth before Grantaire moves to the door of the room. 

“I love you.”

They’ve only been able to say it nonverbally until now, through soup on sick days and meaningful glances across rooms and exchanged housekeys, and now it’s theirs to use whenever they want.

From the doorway, Grantaire smiles back. “I love you too.”

**Author's Note:**

> [Here's a link](https://shitpostingfromthebarricade.tumblr.com/post/187876847259/deleted-scene-the-heart-of-the-matter) to the previously unpublished false-start I made (which includes lots of background info, btw).
> 
> After the first date when it became painfully clear that Enjolras and Grantaire couldn't just argue their way through every interaction, Enjolras started showing up at Éponine's job (an extremely nonmagical bank job, since despite being a powerful sorceress her parents tainted magic for her) before their dates to ask biographical questions about R so they could have proper conversations/Enj wouldn't fuck up every interaction by saying stupid, insensitive shit (since he thought R's words were limited per day, he wanted to make sure he created worthwhile contexts for the words to be used in).
> 
> Comments bring me unspeakable amounts of joy; for more shenanigans or to reach out more anonymously, my [tumblr](http://shitpostingfromthebarricade.tumblr.com) is also an option.


End file.
